Welcome to Deeply Rooted Kids Thanksgiving page! Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of year- a time of family, friends, and reflection. This page contains some of our favorite books to read at Thanksgiving time and one of our very favorite family traditions all year long- our “Thankful Tree”. Let’s choose this season, no matter where we are in life, to focus on the many, many things we have to be thankful for.

The Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons tend to be filled with work, stress and anxiety- not to mention a calendar full of activities. To help focus our hearts and minds during the season of Thanksgiving, our family started a tradition called the “Thankful Tree”.

On November 1st we put up our Thankful Tree on our living room wall. It’s nothing fancy and usually made out of crumpled up paper grocery bags or brown butcher paper (see our plans below for how to assemble a tree of your own). Each evening at dinner we spend time talking about our day and we reflect on what we are thankful for. Each family member says one thing they are thankful for, we write them down on our thankful leaves (see plans below) and we add them to our tree. By the time Thanksgiving arrives, our tree is so full of leaves that we can hardly squeeze in more.

We’ve found our Thankful Tree to be a great way of focusing our hearts during a busy time of year and a great way to reflect on all that we have to be thankful for. Even in the hardest of times, we still have so much to be thankful for.

The season of Thanksgiving leads right into the season of Advent/Christmas. Advent is simply a time of reflection, preparation and celebration of the coming of Christ. We created “The Advent Kids” website to give families a place to help focus on the true meaning of Advent/Christmas. What better way to help prepare our hearts for the season of Advent than to reflect on all that God has blessed us with and all that we have to be thankful for.